


don't let mitski write our love story anymore

by lalalyds2



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Faustus bashing, I promise it's not a lyric infested fic, Kinda, Sibling Incest, Songfic, Spellcest, but there are no happy endings just a forewarning, edit: okay there's a semi-happy ending, it's just musically ambianced, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-13 08:22:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17484578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalyds2/pseuds/lalalyds2
Summary: Every romance is written by the poets, the musicians.Spellmans are written by epics.There must always be tragedy involved.ORthis author made a playlist and cried.





	1. artists make bad narrators

**Author's Note:**

> read this like flashes of dream life, it's chronological, but only just

 

~*~ _Liquid Smooth_ ~*~

 

The moon hangs low, lusting after the earth, burnished gold in its desire.

Fire blazes orange in reflecting envy.

Blood burns red, circling round in river veins.

She is silver in all this aureate light. Like the others, she is extrinsic and nude.

The ground hard, sweat clings, wind touches — they are dancing in the elements.

This is not about fornication, though it will surely come after.

This is apotheosis.

Satan bless it, they are beyond human capacity.

They are young, and immortality is nearly an option. The skin practically bursting with ripe energy.

She shivers under such vitality.

This night will only be saved as a pictured memory.

All they’ll have left is collapse.

But the drum beats, possessing her limbs, seizing her heart, pinching her feet to keep going.

The fire and forest and circling bodies call stronger than Goliath.

Zelda cannot be felled.

She won’t be left behind.

She dances.

It’s not ritual, but it is unearthly.

She feels Circe and Hecate and Lilith in the lowlight.

This is what it means to hold power.

She could cease existence to right this moment. The strength is held aloft in her fists.

It ends too soon.

Her friends laugh as they gambol, nymphs ready to drop this game of devotion and be plundered for treasure.

They fall in the leaves with warlocks, their cries of passion out of line with the drums.

She watches limbs tangle, toes curl, friends becoming bodies becoming liquid.

There’s no hunger for them in her.

She is disappointed.

Rustling comes from leaves, not crunched under the rolling bodies, but by tentative feet.

They have a new audience of one.

It’s Hilda.

It figures.

With every liturgy, there’s an offering.

What better sacrifice can this bed of sin receive than a blushing baby virgin?

But she’s not blushing now, or perhaps the fire hides it.

Her eyes are blue, even in this pitch, and they cannot be torn from Zelda’s body.

She straightens her spine, clenches her abdomen.

If Hilda wants to look, let her look.

Let her take in the pearl-dive frame, the rose quartz tits, the gilded-lily thighs.

Let her see what she already knows.

Zelda celestial.

In full color.

Deistic.

Hilda takes a step closer.

She stops, and Zelda’s head quirks.

How many colors would Hilda spill if she joined the tempest?

Possession seizes her once more, but not to dance.

To own.

Hilda is hers.

She will not share.

She reaches out a hand and takes a step forward.

Hilda doesn’t take it.

Something is about to fall.

They walk back to the Academy.

Silently.

Hilda’s eyes keep landing on her, her gaze touching more intimately than if they’d fucked with all the others.

Sisters kissing sisters doesn’t count in group rutting.

She won’t shiver, but the smoothness of her skin is now raised with goosebumps.

Hilda offers a silk bathrobe.

She’s loathe to part with this nakedness, this Lady Godiva legendary.

But it is cold without the fire and frenzied concupiscence to fuel her.

Hilda keeps eyeing the sharpest part of her hipbone, as if in private conversation.

She lets Hilda keep clutching her robe, juts out the hip closest to her.

“Come. Touch me.”

Her hand shakes in the air.

She notices for the first time — Hilda’s fingers are longer than hers.

Scalding icicle on her skin, she jumps away from Hilda’s contact.

What a contradiction they are.

Hilda holds out her robe.

She slides into it without a ripple, Hilda ties the sash loose.

A halted moment, breath baited.

She should have kissed her then.

Instead, they go to their separate beds, and sleep.

Something is about to fall.

If Hilda can’t catch her, she’ll drop straight to the pit.

She is unafraid.

She is living, and tonight Hilda touched her naked hipbone.

That is all.

But something has already fallen.

 

~*~ _Eric_ ~*~

 

She is so angry.

Hilda is so stupid.

It’d taken her two whole days to come back out this time.

Two whole days of Zelda frantic, Zelda pacing, Zelda debating to dig Hilda out herself or climb in too.

And all she’d had to say for herself was, “Maybe next time don’t put me in there.”

And she’d growled, because caged animals only know how to bite and wait, “Maybe next time I won’t.”

And they both know she cannot mean it.

Hilda will live as many times as she dies.

It is innumerable.

Inevitable.

She already wants to put her back down.

They cannot keep playing this way.

Neither of them is good at learning lessons.

Neither is good at letting control go.

At least she is clear about it.

Hilda resorts to passive aggressive niceties and false comforts and just the right sort of magicks to make people do what she wants.

Worst still, she makes them think they’ve done it in favor to her.

As if she doesn’t know her manipulations.

But even with all this foresight, she falls under it, again tonight and again forever.

Hilda’s locked their door on her.

She’s never done that before.

The vicissitude means whoever’s behind their door is changing, mutating into something that might be un-Hilda.

She strikes the door till her palms ache, to stop the transformation.

It opens, she stumbles in.

Hilda is dripping, bathwater lingering between freckles.

No permutation.

Hilda still in order.

Zelda unbuttons her shirt.

Relief hits her like cool air on the chest, she could weep or bleed from it.

Hilda wary, clamps the towel tighter.

Zelda cannot read her mind, like she has warned her never to do again, but she sees Hilda’s brain working. Thoughts etched out on a wrinkled forehead.

She thinks Zelda’s going to kill her, and she’s embarrassed she’s going to die naked.

In this instant, Zelda would let Hilda hurt her however she chose.

“Help me out of this skirt. The zipper’s stuck.” Is all she says.

Hilda goes down.

Kneels before her, hands wet and gentle on her hips as she tugs the fabric.

Peach shampoo assaults Zelda’s nose. Hilda’s head is brunette while drying.

She wants to kiss it, forgive it, love it fiercely.

She knows the rules though.

She is tired of them.

Hilda looks up at her, the skirt falls away.

She grabs those wondering cheeks with well-manicured fingers, the points digging in five little crescents.

She’d intended to teach Hilda manners.

She kisses her instead.

Tired rules get thrown out.

She yanks the towel down, the rest of her clothes down too.

Skin on skin weeps deliverance in the lamplight.

She’s got a hand on Hilda’s neck and the other cupping her breast.

She is climbing a mountain.

To reach the highest peak, she must go lower.

She does, till she’s rubbing fleshy folds and Hilda’s gasping into her palm.

She’s starting to slip.

Two fingers in a soft hold, she climbs up and in.

Hilda is mewling now.

“This is mine, you hear me?” She says against the roar in her ears, the symphony in her fingertips, the whining throat still pushing itself into her hand.

“This cunt, it’s mine.”

Hilda nods, but her hand goes to Zelda’s breast.

Strange magic, Hilda’s hand truly goes around her heart.

“This is mine then.”

She nods.

The deal is struck.

They come gasping, each owning a part of the other.

They say nothing about it the next morning.

But she wants to, she wants to, she wants to.

 

~*~ _Real Men_ ~*~

 

She looks at the obsidian rock on her fourth finger.

Black is traditional.

Her aesthetic.

It still feels uncomfortable and heavy on her hand.

Faustus proposed while she was on her hands and knees.

She didn’t see his face, only got a ring thrust into hers as other things were thrusted too.

She hadn’t been asked.

Her hand in marriage had simply been taken.

But then he’d put a warm palm on her naked back, had whispered, “Damned, if you’re not a sublime creature to look at.”

And she had shuddered and clenched around him.

He’d taken it as a yes, and she hadn’t flinched.

And in that then, she’d felt the paradigm of man, the kind Faustus heaped praise on but could never truly find.

She’d been collected, and thin, and statuesque. Cleaned up between her thighs and left.

She’d drowned without even making a sound.

She was the real man.

She wasn’t even real.

No wonder Faustus wanted her.

And now she’s on the porch, lungs burning, black diamond glinting malevolent under the outdoor lamps.

All earth-shattering things happen in poor lighting, she muses.

The door opens, she shoves her left hand behind her back.

Hilda is smiling at her, and her heart gurgles its last bubble of air.

They don’t talk. She’s not sure she could say anything anyhow.

She puts the ring in her jewelry box and does not look at it again.

The dinner table bustles, Sabrina and Ambrose bursting at the seams because Faustus has big news he’s going to share soon.

Her entire body shrinks.

Hilda’s made her favorite.

She doesn’t eat a bite.

Later, the silence of her empty room pounding in her brain, she puts her ring back on and summons her new fiancé.

She is surprised and disappointed he appears.

“Say you want me.”

She is harsh about it, pulls his praise from his lips while she’s under him, feels lovely in the savagery.

She can make a beast out of any man.

She is just about to feel better, to feel finally back to blessed woman, when the door opens.

Hilda.

No.

She does not shove him off her fast enough.

Hilda catches the flashing ring.

Her eyes flash darker.

Her fist squeezes.

Zelda’s heart returns.

Only in fragments.

Hilda hisses venomate words.

Already a killing blow, now destined to suffer.

“You own nothing. Nothing is yours.”

The door shakes the frame.

Hilda is gone.

 

~*~ _Happy_ ~*~

 

She still stays in her house, after the ring becomes permanent.

She keeps her name, she keeps her family intact.

All but one member.

Sabrina still won’t speak to her.

But the girl has nowhere to go, except her room, which she will not return from whenever Faustus visits.

He visits often, bringing cookies every time.

He comments the house has lost its sweet tooth, now that a certain frump has disappeared.

The cookies turn ash in her mouth.

She swallows them dry.

Perhaps one day she’ll choke.

Currently, her throat is clogged by too much absence.

She lets the crumbles dissolve in her mouth and quietly misses Hilda.

When she serves him tea, he says things will be okay.

She doesn’t believe him, but she clings tight when he goes to leave.

She knows the way to make him stay. Sighs when it happens.

Not because she likes it.

Oh, she still moans, still clenches when she’s supposed to.

That’s not why she’s eager.

She is eager as all masochists are, she wants to suffer.

Because every time she’s with him, Hilda is there.

The memory that plays on repeat.

At least when Faustus is there, she has something to injure back.

She’s let her nails grow out for the first time in millennia, to dig them into skin.

Sometimes her own, just to prove she’s not dreaming.

But she never is.

Hilda is there.

It cannot be real, because batty bawdy Hilda never says a word, just watches her, glares at her ring, glares as he comes inside.

He won’t stop doing that.

He says he wants another son.

When she asks why, he says it like he’s stating an obvious.

“Because, all powerful beings need a subordinate. Someone to rule. To be god over. It’s how the greats were made. Certainly, you know, otherwise why would your parents have kept Hilda?”

She locks herself in the bathroom until he’s gone.

She hurtles silent agony towards the specter who’s followed her in, clutching her own chest, the heart she doesn’t have use for.

She begs Hilda to take it back, it doesn’t belong with her.

Hilda won’t take it. Won’t say a word.

It beats hollowly, and then Hilda fades.

Anguish pulses in full.

She counts the minutes till Faustus comes back.

It’s the only time her heart remembers it’s not hers and stops hurting so much.

It’s not his either.

It’s just when the external punishment begins, the internal lessens. Ever so slightly.

It isn’t worth it, she knows it, knows nothing else.

It’s her fault anyway.

She should never have chased whatever false dream this turned out to be.

Her heart hadn’t been hers to give.

 

~*~ _Lonesome Love_ ~*~

 

She’s reading a newspaper from Matsumoto when she hears Sabrina’s excited shriek from the hallway.

“Auntie Hilda!”

Paper down, Zelda in the hall.

Her chest lurches foolishly when she realizes her heart is not there in the flesh.

Sabrina’s clutching the phone as though she could hug her absent aunt through it.

She protests loudly when Zelda yanks it from her.

“Where have you been — months Hilda! It’s been months.”

“Hello, Sister.”

Cold words flung like a knife through the receiver.

“I do believe Sabrina and I were in the middle of a conversation, so if you could hand it back to her...”

“Tell me where you are, and I will.”

“Always so melodramatic, are we?”

Her sister has indeed mutated.

The fact stings Zelda’s eyes.

“Hilda.”

“Zelda.”

“ _Please_.”

A crackling sigh.

“I’m at Cee’s. Now will you give the bloody phone to Sabrina?”

She hears them murmuring as she races to her bedroom, closet flung out, every and all dresses old and  _just not right_.

When she finds something almost acceptable, Ambrose is on the telephone.

She’d roll her eyes if she wasn’t busy curling her lashes.

Honestly, it wasn’t like their aunt died.

She’d left.

It hurt infinitely worse.

This was something she’d chosen of her own volition.

But no.

Zelda won’t think of that.

Makeup proofs water, not this torrent of emotion.

She purses her lips, checks her hair for flyaways, spritzes her wrists with something French.

Makes Sabrina drive her into town, because she’s the one who keeps insisting on getting a license.

And for a reason Zelda would never admit — her hands are shaking.

But her heels are high, so is her head.

She enters Cee’s shop like the Queen Satan made her to be.

Hilda is in a booth, in a celery colored dress and an orange wool knit sweater.

Zelda wonders why she’d ever felt nervous in the first place, she always wins their fashion games.

“Hello Zelds.”

She loses.

 

~*~ _First Love / Late Spring_ ~*~

 

She can’t stop staring out the open window.

Her eyes won’t stop leaking.

She takes a harsh drag of her cigarette, blows smoke out into the void.

The meeting hadn’t gone well.

It hadn’t gone at all.

Hilda had complimented her dress, said she was doing fine herself, and that was that.

She’d gone off to find Cee, left Zelda  _again_.

Sabrina had held her hand as they walked out the shop.

She would have scoffed at the comfort if she hadn’t needed it so much.

She’s not sure what she’s waiting for now.

Satan to smite her from the face of the earth.

Hilda on her knees, blubbering some long-winded apology.

Hilda here at all.

A breeze blows back in the window.

A peach tree in blossom.

Her leaking rivulets turn to rivers.

She’s not sure when she became this — she feels wild, but very much scared.

She looks out the window again.

She’s tempted.

“Don’t.”

Hilda’s voice.

She takes a step back.

“Are you specter or spirit?”

“Projection.”

She nods, won’t turn around.

She keeps looking into the black.

“Why are you here?”

“You know.”

“Then say it.”

“Do you really want me to?”

She bites her lip.

No.

She doesn’t want to hear her sister loves her.

She’d think it a lie anyway.

Hilda left, she shouldn’t be allowed to linger like this.

“I can’t breathe.”

Whispered.

Hurts more than screaming.

She feels a cold breeze.

She hiccoughs at Hilda’s unending dimwittedness.

“Did you just try to hug me?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Come home.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You know.”

Her ring burns cold on her finger.

She remembers a freezing hot touch on her hipbone.

“I didn’t give him what’s yours.”

A deep sigh.

“Then what did you give him?”

“Everything else.”

The waiting is unbearable.

“Well, Hilda? Why aren’t you hurting me?”

“Because there’s no pleasure fighting a battle I already lost.”

She turns around.

The room is empty.

She cries in earnest.

Like some tall, angry child, she bangs her fists on the carpeted floor.

She rails on against the universe till she’s red in the hands and blue in the face and nothing feels better.

She sleeps where she’s fallen.

The window stays open.

 

~*~ _Why Didn’t You Stop Me?_ ~*~

 

She shivers in a blanket, eyes red and nose running.

Sabrina scolds her for leaving her window open, something even a teenager knows not to do, and makes her chicken soup from a can.

She sips it and quietly misses Hilda.

She still doesn’t understand how this happened, how things got so far.

She sits on the couch and scowls at Audrey Hepburn.

Charade no fun when she’s the one in the dark.

She drifts in and out of consciousness, and wonders.

Hilda knows her better than anyone, surely saw the signs she and Faustus had — they were practically neon fluorescent.

Hilda knows she owns a part of Zelda, must have seen this danger.

So why didn’t she stop her?

The question rolls around in her mind for two nights, while her coughing keeps away Faustus and sleep.

It tastes sour in her mouth.

Her heart had not been worth warding off potential threats.

But she knows that’s not how Hilda’s brain, birdbat as it is, works.

She doesn’t know how it does. She never has.

She should have been greedy, grabbed Hilda’s cunt and her mind — claimed two things.

Probably wouldn’t have helped. Couldn’t have hurt.

She drifts through the house in a fog, like a ghoul, settling into the family photo albums, seeking a certain one to pilfer.

She needs a picture of Hilda close to her heart, maybe that will finally shut it up.

She’s not sure if that’s wishful thinking or an actual remedy. That was always Hilda’s area of expertise.

She frowns, scans through the centuries.

Frowns harder.

She can’t find that picture of Hilda.

The one that she remembers.

Search going frantic, she pulls the living room apart.

Sabrina comes in, admonishes, astonishes herself for becoming Zelda.

Zelda is distraught.

It’s not until Sabrina gets right in her face, asking the same question, that she’s sent to her room.

_What are you looking so hard for?_

She’s looking for a photo Sabrina wouldn’t approve of.

Nothing risqué.

Just a Polaroid of a day she’d been feeling generous, whimsical enough to kiss her sister’s nose right as the freckles formed under the sun.

Edward had taken it, made multiple copies and became insufferable about photography for a week, then promptly dropped it.

She does appreciate the pictures though.

Hilda had looked happy.

Hers.

So where is it?

She searches every stack of papers, finds it folded within a cookbook no one uses anymore, despairs when she realizes a truth.

A devastation.

This is not what she remembers.

They just look like sisters.

They’ve never been “just” anything.

Hilda does not look happy.

Her nose is scrunched, the way it does when something is too much.

Magnanimity looks like ill intent on Zelda. 

This is not what she remembers. 

She remembers buttercups and falling spring and a hand on her knee when the world spun precariously. 

She remembers love. 

Perhaps that’s never been true.

Why did no one tell her so?


	2. but they make good stories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is hilda's side of the playlist!  
> fair warning, the ~*~ I Don't Smoke ~*~ section of this chapter is not for the faint-hearted.  
> probably.

 

~*~ _Strawberry Blond_ ~*~

 

The sun holds high, warm on the backs of heads and the fronts of cliffs of Erris Head.

Endless blue.

The sky and the sea touch gently.

Frolicking green, cut sharply by gray slate mountain.

She’s a little swallowed in it, the vastness of this place.

One head tilt, and she’ll fall deep into the yonder.

It’s only a toasted hand that keeps her fastened to gravity.

Zelda holds her lightly, they rest soft, the dips in the grass will only hold their shape for a little while.

When recounting this memory, she will always say it’s this moment that left an imprint on Ireland.

It’s left an imprint on her.

This is the place she feels sovereign.

Zelda finds magic in moon dance, in body melts, in beating drums.

Hilda finds transcendence in rolling fields, in swarming bumble bees, in the shape of her sister’s life.

Sometimes she wonders how they stay Gemini.

Zelda stretches, stands up on bare feet, drops her hand as she makes her way back.

They both love traveling, Hilda craves it a little more.

It’s only in nowhere that she feels they belong.

When they’re nowhere, they can hold hands, and nothing is said.

In the cities, they stay two feet apart, and there’s no proof Zelda even knows her.

She doesn’t need acknowledgement, so long as they continue to arrive nowhere together.

When it comes time to return home, she aches while she packs up laundry.

They’re going to a place they know, are known, and they won’t hold hands anymore.

They’ll go back to owning bits and pieces of each other, not the whole.

Not the entirety.

She thinks it over and aches.

Greendale roads pull on her soul, she tries to pay attention to white lines but the white line of Zelda’s arm out the window is more distracting.

She is dozing, strawberry blond, a mess as wind laughs around her.

Hilda has never felt affection strike so acutely.

There’s desperation there too.

“I love you.”

Relief to say it.

“You love everybody.”

A panic.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“You’re humming.”

She focuses back on white lines, cheeks burning.

With every minute closer to home, the veil of sisterhood drops heavy.

Love will have a different meaning.

No matter the perspective, this thought is clear:

She loves everybody because she loves Zelda.

But Zelda is always above.

It won’t make sense if she explains it.

Suddenly, she feels very silly.

They drive on.

She aches.

 

~*~ _A Burning Hill_ ~*~

 

White cotton breathes light in the mist. Morning cobwebs sag with water crystals.

The fog is heavy in the valley.

She aches as she climbs up the hill.

She wishes for something fiercer.

The world is smoke, and the forest is smoke, and Zelda is getting married in four hours.

She will not be attending.

Everything up in flames.

Reality — everything is damp.

It’s going to be a rather nice day.

Even the weather won’t give her rain. Or dry her out, so she can blaze.

Hilda needs something harsh.

She has never known rage as intimately as her sister.

Wishes for it now.

Ferocity leaves burns, but at least it satisfies.

This poison, this chronic disease of loving her sister, it’s only left her tired.

She’s worn through, doesn’t know how to keep the fight.

She can’t even cry.

It’s the reason she’s here in the tall grass, as the world shivers with waking.

But she only watches, as internal forests burn in fires of her own making.

She has always been witness to her own life, not sure if she’s ever participated fully.

Not true.

It is her when she holds Zelda’s hand and heart and knows she owns something precious.

It is her in the evenings when Zelda is ravenous, and their room smells like cigarettes and primality.

It is her. And Zelda.

But Zelda isn’t here anymore.

Zelda isn’t here at all.

It’s just her.

She can’t do this, this living in the shape of her sister.

She’s got to love some littler things.

She climbs back down the hill and goes to work.

Cee looks up as the doorbell jingles and his face lights up when he sees it’s her.

“You look nice.”

“I forgot my uniform.”

“Still.”

She looks down. Sees white.

“Zelda’s getting married today.”

“Oh. But you’re here.”

“Yes.”

And then, they move on.

As if her life is clean.

As if the world has not already ended.

They move on.

Nothing changes.

Everything is different.

 

~*~ _I Don’t Smoke_ ~*~

 

Stepping into her own house shouldn’t feel this strange.

She feels outside.

Sabrina clings tight and Ambrose claps his hands, a standing ovation for the slightest performance of Hilda-isms.

Zelda clings the blanket round her shoulders tighter, sniffs, says nothing.

They haven’t spoken since she projected into her sister’s room and found desolation in it.

They don’t speak still.

But the mortuary needs help.

Ambrose is at school now, Sabrina’s got two, and Zelda coughs so hard her frame shakes in extreme.

Hilda rolls up her sleeves.

The morgue is silent, save for her out-of-tune warbling, the scent of formaldehyde and rubbing alcohol a comforting sting in her nose.

The man on the table her only companion, she hears Zelda coughing above her.

She’s about to pause a moment, make a poultice of rosehip and ginger and echinacea, but stops.

She doesn’t do that anymore.

She snips the body’s toe tag and slips on his shoes.

Mr. Connor Doyle is ready for final resting.

Peace painted on.

She goes upstairs before envy sets in.

In the hall, she flounders.

She doesn’t know how to be here anymore.

She goes into the parlor, because she doesn’t know how to leave either.

She sits in the hard-backed chair, sighs when her back complains.

Silence.

Like jellies in the fridge, she starts to settle.

The blanket on the couch in front of her moves.

She shrieks even though she knows it’s Zelda.

“Satan’s sake, Zelds.”

And just like that, she’s done it.

She’s broken whatever seal it was between them and Zelda is getting up.

She wonders if she’s joining Mr. Doyle today.

Instead, Zelda crumples before her, rests her head on skirted knees, leans against her shins as though they can meld together simply by wishing it.

“I’m missing cigarettes.” Is all she whispers.

Hilda knows what she won’t add on.

 _I’m missing you_.

“I’m sure you are.”

 _I am too_.

Long-nailed hands fumble, unusually graceless as Zelda searches for something within her V neckline.

Hilda watches the skin that peeks through.

Zelda discovers her prize, slim white paper and a light.

She holds it out, asks in quiet gesture.

“You know I don’t do that.”

She is frozen, relentless.

Hilda sighs and opens her mouth.

Cigarette inserted, she inhales.

An acrid cloud travels down her throat, inhabits her lungs, she breathes out slow in Zelda’s face.

The following sigh is her soul sound. It is very weary.

“This is not helpful to your cold.”

She receives a kiss on the knee.

She goes rigid.

“Don’t do that.”

Zelda’s head falls.

“Are you so unhappy here?”

“Stop it.”

Her velvet cheek rubs listless on pink cotton.

Hilda is so angry she could spit.

Her body, the great betrayer, is bothered.

She taps ash in Zelda’s hair.

“Do that again.”

She grips the armchairs very tight.

“Why are you acting like this? Do you want me to break you?”

The answering “yes” is very small.

It stuns her silly.

She chooses her next words carefully, enunciates clearly.

“You chose to marry him. You don’t get to feel guilty too.”

“Would you rather me happy?”

In truth?

No.

She wouldn’t.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Zelda.”

“I want you to.”

Still so quiet.

Her head goes back as she fights tears, her skull hitting wood with a dull thunk.

Pushing the cigarette stub hard on the side table’s tray, her hands go soft and smooth on Zelda’s strawberry hair.

“When you kill me —“

She’s interrupted by a strangled sound, Zelda tries to get up.

Her hands grip tight, push down.

Zelda is trapped between her hands and her thighs, head tilted to watch the fireplace.

She does not cage easily.

But this is what she asked for.

No.

She was asking something smaller.  

“When you kill me — it hurts. It always does. But it lingers.”

Zelda’s nails are sharp and clawing. She rips Hilda’s skirt.

“Rigor Mortis calcifies joints. Dirt infects. Blood loss and broken skin do not easily repair.”

The wail that bursts forth is angry and guttural. Her thighs sting and bleed.

Her hands card through curls gently.

Insistent.

“But every time — and listen Zelda, because this hurts most.”

Zelda does pause, but she’s pinching her inner thigh.

“I am left hollow. The ground calls to me.”

The squeezing is painful.

“Every time I go back in, the urge to come back out lessens.”

The pinch breaks skin. Her cunt starts to leak.

“But I know I can’t stay down there, because you need me.”

There’s wetness on her skirt. Zelda’s shoulders rattle.

“So I come back — I keep coming back. And yet, here we are. Because I am still not enough.”

The sob wrenches deep from Zelda’s body. She could choke on it.

Hilda lets go of her head and awaits the storm.

Zelda rises, and her makeup is smeared, and her nose is snotty and the ugliness of the entire afternoon hits like static electricity.

"Is that really what you think?"

Impending doom.

Hilda shrugs to it.

“That's why you’re married. You don’t want something so dead.”

She is kissed harsh on the mouth.

Assaulted by a grieving tongue, she bites down hard.

Zelda moans and straddles her thighs.

She hitches up the tight skirt, is satisfied with the sound of torn stitching, feels the angry velvet that nearly sucks her fingers in.

She pushes, Zelda leans on her arm and keens at the unexpected fullness.

Feels salt against her neck as Zelda swears up and down she’s not dead, she’s not dead, she’s alive.

She’s not so sure.

She used to feel Zelda’s heart beat in her hand, used to thrust deep and feel her tyranny on Zelda’s yearning.

She does not feel it now.

Only dully feels a faint pulsing against her palm as Zelda holds it tight to her breast.

She cannot own it again.

Cannot anticipate when Zelda comes on her fingers, pushes down further and comes again.

Somehow, it is this action that breaks her heart.

Their rhythms are uneven.

When Zelda reaches for her, down under her skirt, forgotten rage swells up again.

She shoves, _hard_ , Zelda falls off.

“That’s not yours anymore.”

The growl is foreign to her.

Animal. Alien.

Scares her.

Zelda blinks wide-eyed, sprawled out on the floor.

They stare.

Hilda suddenly feels guilty, then very used.

“Was this what you wanted, Sister?”

Eyes narrow.

She can anticipate the anger.

She’s out the door before a glass vase shatters where her head should have been.

 

~*~ _Shame (Jammin’ Out Solo Version)_ ~*~

 

She does not return to the mortuary (she refuses to call it a house any longer), till Sabrina begs her help through the phone.

“I don’t know what happened between you and Aunt Zelda, but you need to fix it.”

And it must always be her that fixes.

“It’s complicated, Sabrina.”

“What’s so complicated about it? You’re sisters. Sisters forgive each other.”

“It’s  _very_  complicated.”

“Okay, I guess I understand. But we’ve got two bodies and the funeral day is the same. Aunt Zee can’t do it all. Plus, I miss you.”

Sabrina doesn’t understand a thing.

Hilda sighs.

“Please, Auntie Hilda? For me?”

“Fine.”

Zelda’s not the only one who cannot say no to Sabrina.

There’s nobody in the morgue when she arrives.

She works quickly, does no humming, finishes around 8:30.

She’s just about to open the door when she hears Faustus’ voice, Zelda breathy and sighing.

She freezes. Goes to open the door.

Not to confront, just escape.

Her hand’s on the knob when she hears a sharp thud.

Zelda grunts against the door.

Sound of a zipper dropping.

Fury — as only Zelda can draw out of her.

This is not coincidental.

Zelda has no limits when enacting revenge.

She’s about to climb the stairs, she cannot bear to stay, when she feels Zelda’s telekinesis on her feet.

She is trapped against the door.

She hears Zelda moan.

Bitch. Fuck. Cunt.

She keeps losing this war.

She doesn’t even want to play.

Since when has love been fair? 

There’s a sharp breath — what Zelda sounds like when her neck is bitten.

Her folds begin to throb.

Unbearably.

Damn her straight to the pit.

Silently, she rucks up her skirt, leans back on the door, feels vibrations from where Zelda’s being unceremoniously shoved up against it too.

She can see it so clearly in her mind’s eye. Zelda rumpled, head pulled back, mouth open.

She touches herself.

It’s been awhile.

She jumps against her own fingers.

Faustus grunts out a “Fuck” and it is so heinously ape, she goes dry.

Zelda whispers, “Harder.”

She hates herself when her fingers slip again.

She rubs her clit as the thumping noise begin in earnest, trying her damnedest to finish quickly.

Zelda cries out.

She shoves her fingers past her knickers and pushes in deep.

The bruise on her thigh stings.

She rocks against her hand, biting the other to keep quiet, all the while sending a mental “Fuck you” to her sister.

It must be deafening, even to the untrained telepath.

Zelda whimpers.

She comes violently.

Shame floods while she pulses.

But it feels so good. 

By the time Faustus is gone and her feet are finally free, her legs are cold and sticky, and she is so bloody sick of this emotional gymnastics competition she could retch.

Zelda opens the door.

They are simultaneously ruffled and glaring at each other’s bitten lips.

Zelda points to the mess her thighs make.

“Still mine.”

Hilda slaps her.

The sting satisfies them both.

She leaves in a flurry and goes straight to Cee’s shop.

He looks up as the bell rings, smiles so sweet at her.

She feels a little sorry for how roughly she shoves him into the back room.

When he sighs into her mouth, sorry fades away.

She closes the door.

 

~*~ _Me and My Husband_ ~*~

 

She wakes in a foreign space.

The ceiling above her is high and white, the sheets bunched around her waist are red.

Black comforter slid off.

She’s not wearing a bra.

Panic flutters like bird wings.

She flaps about the room, grabs the bra from the floor, blushes and snatches her knickers off the bed post — stops because the information hitting her brain leaves her dizzy.

She steals a few breaths.

Memories trickle in with morning sun.

Breath goes gasp.

Anxiety before 7 a.m.

She dresses haphazardly, whimpers in the mirror at the sight of her makeup gone all wrong.

No paint here to fix it.

The door opens, she whirls.

Cee’s hair is all mussy, his t-shirt and boxers crumpled like happy, he balances a tray of pancakes and orange juice.

He looks at her stupor.

His smile is megawatt.

“Good morning, beautiful.”

Joy in his cadence.

She sighs in relief.

They kiss, surprisingly chaste.

He doesn’t comment on morning breath. Gives her a new tooth brush.

She’s never felt a better like this.

Breakfast is champion.

Not as good as hers, but she won’t hold it against him.

Between bites of maple syrup, he asks if he can take her on a proper date.

Offers a movie, or dinner. Or coffee. Or Niagara.

As long as they’re together.

She must look confounded, because he laughs, but it’s so tender.

“I just... you really want to date me?”

His sincerity nearly makes her eyes rain.

“I do.” He takes her hands. “I think good things will happen if we stick together.”

She kisses his hopeful, furrowed, nervous brow, and hopes to Satan she gets to keep this one, at least in this lifetime.

“Okay. Let’s stick together.”

 

~*~ _Square (Solo Piano Version)_ ~*~

 

Something is not quite right.

She loves something littler, is loved back a lot.

It doesn’t fit well.

Only she is noticing.

Cee’s got a one-bedroom, everything perfectly placed.

He won’t hear of her going back to the motel, but she knows she’s taking up space.

He holds her hand so easily, it’s not hard to forget.

He makes her tea in the evenings after work.

She misses the spot of milk and sugar, always denies it when he offers.

She looks at the photographs he keeps on the wall.

His old girlfriend was very pretty, and fairly thin. Very pale.

She sucks it in and doesn’t sleep when hunger hits.

She’s never had a boyfriend before. Isn’t sure how to keep one.

They don’t sleep together as much as she was told couples are supposed to.

She feels relieved.

She shouldn’t, but does.

His affection feels so much better than desire.

She doesn’t understand his kind of wanting, only knows the burn of Zelda’s.

It’s hard to change tastes.

When they watch old horror movies, their legs cross over under blankets. His arm tucks around her shoulders.

She knows this — a happiness.

But something itches.

He holds her hand when they walk in the park, holds his breath when they go under bridges, she loves that he never lets her go.

When they walk in the city, he displays her proudly.

It doesn’t settle.

She wishes it would.

He is so easily contented, she always impresses, it takes little effort to feel like she’s wanted.

She keeps waiting for life to fall.

When it doesn’t, she's very nearly angry.

Incomprehensible why.

So she works harder in the shop, they’ve never sold so much coffee.

She loses five pounds.

He says he’d loved her already before.

The words get stuck in her throat when she tries to say it back.

He says it’s alright.

She knows it’s not.

She cleans his apartment, finds bits of fur though he doesn’t own any animals. Sweeps it up along with the cobwebs.

Sabrina visits the shop often.

She won’t speak to Hilda, but she doesn’t visit for coffee or books.

She stares at her aunt like there’s a great big puzzle in her wig.

She glares at Cee like something nasty.

Hilda still lets him kiss her in public.

She’s trying to learn how to be loved softly.

It’s not really working.

She looks up as the door rings, a greeting dies on her tongue.

Zelda, in full color.

She flashes back to months ago.

 _Zelda a goddess. Zelda almost out the window_. 

Her mouth hangs mute and wide open.

The black ring flashes in sunshine and cheap store lighting.

It closes with a snap.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m missing cigarettes.”

Smoke in the throat. Smoke from the brain.

“I’m sure you are.”

They don’t say much after that.

Fierce affection hits, she sees white lines and Ireland.

Zelda is gone before she says something stupid.

Late in the night, she calls a taxi.

Cee helps her pack and looks for all the world like he’s drowning.

“Did I not make you happy?”

As if the fault could ever be his.

She holds his cheek in one hand, kisses that gentle, furrowed brow.

“You did. You make such a good man.”

“Then why are you leaving?”

“I couldn’t earn your love.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“That was the problem.”

He kisses her, soft on the mouth, and she knows he’s all she’s ever wanted.

But he’s not what she needs.

Hilda bites a goodbye, he puts a hand to his lip.

Smile rueful, eyes shining with understanding and probably water.

“I never even knew you, did I?”

She smiles, because it hurts.

“No.”

He closes her car door, so kind even in loss.

She could wait a thousand years and never meet another like him.

But she’s been waiting on someone else almost three hundred years already.

She can wait a little more.

 

~*~ _I Want You_ ~*~

 

She pauses time when she reaches the mortuary — when she reaches  _home_.

She stays in the car, heart pounding around her ears.

She wants this so badly she could scream.

But she hasn’t told anyone she’s coming back, that she’s starting over.

That dream world has ended and it turned out false in the first place.

She cannot love littler things.

She has tried.

She cannot.

She looks up at the house.

Zelda is at the window, features frozen, illuminated by backlighting, haloed in Hilda’s vision.

Hilda is done fighting.

She loves Zelda, has wanted her from the very beginning.

But she doesn’t want bits and pieces.

She wants the entirety.

But she will take what she can get.

Time releases, she opens the door.

Stepping out, there’s no ground.

She’s falling in fear and falling with love and she’s pretty sure she hasn’t moved an inch.

The cab driver is kind, stands with her as she looks up.

“I’d be scared of this house too. Spooky.”

“I live here.”

“Weird.”

He takes out her suitcase, pauses when she doesn’t budge.

“Do you wanna stay?”

“I do, I just... I need a quiet space to scream out love.”

“I don’t get it.”

She smiles fully at him, he grins like he got a hundred-dollar tip.

“I don’t either.”

Zelda’s still watching from the house, staring unabashedly at her suitcase. 

Hilda wants her so bad.

She pays the man, takes a deep breath. 

Feels eyes on her hair with every step on the stairs.

One last chance to run. 

It’s a bluff she doesn’t need. 

She keeps coming back.

Always will. 

She opens the door. 

Steps in. 

“Hilda?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also, if anyone want's to hear the playlist this work was inspired by, here's a link!  
> enjoy :) 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjRAbOZEynLj4z_EXh5j7rJPgexPQNTFZ

**Author's Note:**

> if you stuck through this song madness - congrats!  
> i appreciate you <3


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